The library district and the city are sharing the cost of the project at Broadway and Grant
Avenue, which is expected to cost at least $17 million.

“We’re two years in and we have no idea where the building stands,” Billman-Royer said. She said
residents are telling them “we need to move on and approve the library.”

City officials and consultants agreed a library representative should have been at the meeting
where the latest proposal was discussed. The library will be included in all future conversations,
they said.

The latest proposal differs only slightly from an earlier one presented to the library board,
city officials said. The latest one keeps Grant on the building’s south side as a two-way street,
which reduces the Broadway frontage of the library by 12 feet compared with an earlier proposal
that makes Grant into a narrower one-way street.

The city’s goal is to keep the building at 45,000 square feet, Mayor Richard “Ike” Stage said at
the meeting. Also, the target is at least 91 parking spaces contiguous to the library.

The latest proposal realigns Columbus Street so that it crosses Broadway and terminates in a
library parking lot. An exhibit also shows Columbus Street possibly extending even farther to link
with Beulah Park, the former thoroughbred racetrack marked for redevelopment.

City Administrator Chuck Boso said the cost of realigning and extending Columbus Street to the
library is in the ballpark of $700,000. However, the city already was figuring to pay much of that
by upgrading Mill Street, which Columbus would now replace, and reworking traffic signals and
burying utility lines at the site, Boso said.

Libraries Director Mark Shaw said that without solid plans or cost figures for the library, the
trustees should include an “exit clause” in their agreement with the city. If they don’t like any
change in the building’s design, or the cost seems too high, “we’re gone,” Shaw said.

The alternative would be renovating or rebuilding at the current library site on Park Street.
City officials are counting on the new library being downtown as a key element of the Town Center
redevelopment.

The consultants said they should complete a survey of the downtown site next week and present a
more detailed proposal to the library trustees at the Sept. 9 meeting.